Chatbase made it easy to put an AI chatbot trained on your own website and documents in front of customers. In 2026 its entry plan costs $150 a month, or $120 billed yearly, and many small businesses start looking for alternatives the day the trial ends. Three smaller companies come up again and again: SiteGPT, CustomGPT.ai and Botpress. They do the same core job, answer visitors from your own content, but they count usage in completely different units: message credits, messages, queries and conversations. This guide puts all four on the same scale using only the prices on each vendor's pricing page, read on November 15, 2026.
Quick verdict. SiteGPT is the cheapest way to run a single website chatbot, from $39 a month billed yearly. Chatbase is the most complete out of the box, with voice, actions and dozens of integrations on its entry plan. Botpress is the right pick when the bot must follow real conversation flows and hand off to a team, and its free plan lets you test with 100 conversations. CustomGPT.ai is built for large document libraries and citations, but its $99 plan caps you at 1,000 queries a month.
At a glance
| Chatbase | SiteGPT | CustomGPT.ai | Botpress | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price (monthly billing) | $150/mo | $59/mo | $99/mo | Free, then Plus |
| Entry price (yearly billing) | $120/mo | $39/mo | $89/mo | Plus $150/mo billed annually |
| What you get | 4,000 message credits | Up to 4,000 GPT-4.1-mini messages | 1,000 queries, 10 agents | 250 conversations (Plus) |
| Free option | 7-day trial | 7-day trial, card required | 7-day trial | Free plan, 100 conversations |
| Remove branding | $99/mo add-on | $39/mo add-on, billed yearly | Premium plan ($499/mo) | Plus plan (white-label webchat) |
| Best for | All-round support agent | One site, tight budget | Big document libraries | Structured flows and teams |
Sources: chatbase.co/pricing, sitegpt.ai/pricing, customgpt.ai/pricing and botpress.com/pricing on November 15, 2026. Prices change; check the page before you buy.
The units are the whole story
Before comparing prices, understand what each vendor counts:
- Chatbase counts message credits. The Basic plan includes 4,000 a month, and extra credits cost $40 per 1,000 on auto-recharge. How many credits a reply uses can depend on the model you choose, so check the credit cost of your model inside the app.
- SiteGPT counts messages and scales them by model: the Starter plan is "up to 4k GPT-4.1-mini messages or 400 GPT-4.1 messages", with any mix in between. Using the stronger model divides your allowance by ten.
- CustomGPT.ai counts queries, meaning questions asked to your agent. Standard includes 1,000 a month.
- Botpress counts conversations, which can contain many messages. Plus includes 250 a month, then packs of 100 for $65, and every conversation includes $0.10 of AI usage covered by Botpress.
A business that receives 400 chat conversations a month, averaging five visitor messages each, sends about 2,000 messages. Here is what that same month costs on each platform.
What 400 conversations a month costs
| 400 conversations, about 2,000 messages | Monthly billing | Yearly billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| SiteGPT Starter | $59 | $39/mo | Fits if most replies use GPT-4.1-mini. With GPT-4.1 only, 400 messages a month is the cap. |
| Chatbase Basic | $150 | $120/mo | Fits within 4,000 credits if each reply uses about one credit. Add $99/mo to remove the branding. |
| Botpress Plus | Not shown | $150 + 2 packs x $65 = $280/mo | 250 included, 150 extra conversations in two packs of 100. |
| CustomGPT.ai | $499 (Premium) | $449/mo | Standard's 1,000 queries is not enough for 2,000 questions, so you need Premium. |
The spread is large: from $39 to $499 a month for the same traffic. The deciding factor is not the headline price but whether your traffic fits inside the plan's unit.
Chatbase
Chatbase's Basic plan, $150 a month or $120 billed yearly, includes 4,000 message credits, 500 test credits, one agent, 3 team members, 40 MB of training content, 8 AI actions and 4 procedures per agent. It is unusually complete for an entry plan: frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others, a helpdesk inbox, voice with telephony and 10 concurrent calls, API access, and native integrations with Stripe, Zendesk, Intercom, HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Calendly, among others.
The Business plan, $500 a month or $400 yearly, raises the allowance to 15,000 credits and 5 members and adds advanced analytics and sources suggestions.
What to watch: the add-ons. Removing "Powered by Chatbase" costs $99 a month, each extra agent $25 a month, and extra storage $25 per 10 MB a month. A business that wants an unbranded bot pays $249 a month on monthly billing.
SiteGPT
SiteGPT is the budget pick. Starter costs $59 a month, or $468 a year (the equivalent of $39 a month), for one chatbot, up to 4,000 GPT-4.1-mini messages, 1,000 pages of training content (a page is 2,500 cleaned characters) and one member. Growth, $129 monthly or $79 a month yearly, gives 2 chatbots, 10,000 messages, 10,000 pages, 4 members, advanced analytics with knowledge gaps, API access, integrations with Slack, Messenger, Crisp, Freshdesk Messaging and Zoho SalesIQ, and an iOS app to take over conversations from your phone. Scale, $429 monthly or $259 a month yearly, goes to 40,000 messages and 50,000 pages. Extra packs of 5,000 messages cost $59 a month, or $39 billed yearly.
What to watch: removing "Powered by SiteGPT" is a $39 a month add-on billed yearly, the trial requires a card, Starter only refreshes your content manually, and the stronger GPT-4.1 model uses your allowance ten times faster.
CustomGPT.ai
CustomGPT.ai targets businesses with a lot of documents. Standard, $99 a month or $89 billed yearly, includes 10 agents, 1,000 queries a month, 5,000 documents per agent, 60 million words of storage, 3 team members and API access. Premium, $499 a month or $449 yearly, includes 25 agents, 5,000 queries, 20,000 documents per agent, 300 million words, 5 members, automatic website sync and removal of CustomGPT.ai branding.
What to watch: the query cap. A thousand questions a month is enough for an internal knowledge assistant or a niche site, not for a busy customer-facing chat. If you have ten product manuals and modest traffic, Standard is good value. If you have heavy traffic and one website, it is the most expensive option here.
Botpress
Botpress is a different kind of tool: a builder for structured conversational agents, closer to a workflow designer than a "paste your URL" chatbot. The Free plan includes 100 conversations a month with no overages, 3 seats and 3 agents. Plus, $150 a month billed annually, includes 250 conversations, $25 of AI usage, unlimited agents, a white-label webchat and live-chat support, with packs of 100 extra conversations for $65. Team, $750 a month billed annually, includes 1,500 conversations, packs at $50, unlimited seats, team routing and permissions.
What to watch: the learning curve and the conversation unit. Botpress rewards someone willing to design flows. If you just want answers from your website by Friday, SiteGPT or Chatbase are faster.
Which one should you choose
Pick SiteGPT if
You have one website, a modest budget and mostly simple questions: opening hours, services, prices, policies. At $39 a month billed yearly it is a quarter of Chatbase's entry price.
Pick Chatbase if
You want the most features without building anything: actions, voice, many models and native helpdesk and CRM integrations, all on the entry plan. Budget for the branding add-on if a "Powered by" line bothers you.
Pick Botpress if
The bot must follow real processes, route to the right team and keep humans in the loop, and someone on your side will design it. Start free with 100 conversations.
Pick CustomGPT.ai if
Your value is a large library of documents that must be answered with sources, and your query volume is moderate.
What none of them do on their own
A chatbot that answers questions is only half of the job. The value for a small business comes from what happens next:
- 1 Capture. The visitor's name, email and request must land in your CRM, not stay in the chatbot's inbox.
- 2 Qualify and route. A sales question goes to sales within minutes; a support request opens a ticket; an urgent case alerts a person.
- 3 Follow up. If the visitor leaves without booking, an email or text follows the same day.
- 4 Learn. Unanswered questions are reviewed weekly and turned into new content.
All four platforms expose webhooks or an API, which means an automation tool such as n8n can take every conversation and do the rest. That is the piece we build most often for small teams, because it is where leads are lost.
How to choose in one afternoon
- 1 Export last month's contact form messages and emails, and count real questions.
- 2 Convert that volume into each vendor's unit: credits, messages, queries or conversations.
- 3 Start the trial (or Botpress Free) on the two platforms that fit your volume and budget.
- 4 Train both on the same pages and ask both the same 30 real questions.
- 5 Score accuracy, tone and whether each bot admits when it does not know.
- 6 Check the cost of removing branding and adding the integrations you need.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest Chatbase alternative?
SiteGPT's Starter plan at $39 a month billed yearly, or $59 monthly, is the cheapest paid option among these four. Botpress has a free plan limited to 100 conversations a month.
Is Chatbase worth $150 a month?
It is if you use what the entry plan includes: actions, voice, many models and native integrations. If you only need a website FAQ bot, cheaper tools do the same core job.
Does CustomGPT.ai have a free plan?
No. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, then Standard at $99 a month or $89 billed yearly.
Can these chatbots book appointments?
Chatbase lists Calendly among its integrations and supports AI actions. The others can trigger bookings through their APIs or webhooks, usually connected through an automation tool.
Which one is best for customer support with a team?
Botpress Team, with routing, permissions and unlimited seats, and Chatbase with its helpdesk inbox and Zendesk, Intercom and Freshdesk integrations.
If you want a website chatbot that also captures, routes and follows up every lead in your own accounts, we build that layer with n8n at a fixed price. Book a free automation audit and we will tell you which of these tools fits your traffic.
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Steve founded PURIST, a workflow automation studio working with n8n, Make and Claude AI, and is the point of contact on every project. Prices and features in our articles come from vendor documentation and public pricing pages. How we research and score tools.
